To Have and to Hold…on Mother’s Day!

Posted on May 3, 2013

A quarter of a century ago, on Mother’s Day 1988, I brought home my first bundle of joy: the ultimate Mother’s Day gift, my Nitasha, or Tash, as we lovingly call her. 

On the date, every month, for twelve months, we celebrated her birthday! Then her first, second, third, all the way to today! 25 ! WOW! It seemed like it flew by. Gretchen Ruben from The Happiness Project says, “The days are long and the years, short.” I couldn’t agree more.

Yesterday morning, as I was reflecting back, I wondered if we did all the right things for her; if we said all the right things to her. I wondered if we raised her as well as we had planned to? And then I got this picture from her! (You see she is off celebrating her grand 25th birthday in NY with her brother and cousins).

Looking at the picture, I got my answer. In fact, I got several of them! Nitasha:

is Funny – she finds humor in everything and humor finds her back.

is Loving – she loves life, knows how to enjoy it AND shares it, bar none!

is Compassionate – she cries when she reads her friend’s post; a friend, her own age who was recently diagnosed with cancer and acknowledges her every Facebook post updates about her treatment.

is Kind – she has taken her brother on this trip, all expenses paid (with her own money!)

is Trustworthy -if you’re a friend and have lost your keys in the middle of the night or have had one too many drinks — fear not — Nitasha will be at your private concierge service.

is Honest – if I give her $10 to pay for something that costs $9.85, rest assured, she will bring me my change back.

is Respectful -to her grandparents, parents, cousins, friends, neighbors, co-workers, grocery store cashiers, cab drivers, porters, teachers, Taco Bell and In-n-Out drive-thru window-attendants… pretty much everybody!

is Grateful -for the things she has, for her life, for her brother, for her grandparents, parents, cousins… pretty much everybody on the list above.

She is also very intelligent, a deep thinker, a very conscious and spiritually aware young adult.

Yes, she can challenge us and test our patience as she had many a times as she was growing up, but such behavior was always, always in the pursuit of knowledge! If we answer her big question of “Why?” to her satisfaction, that’s all she has ever needed. It is in answering her “WHY” questions all the time that I have found the answers to my own questions as well. In her search for knowledge, she fills everyone’s buckets along the way!

I don’t know if we did ALL the right things for her, but I do know she has done ALL the right things by us. What more could a mother have asked for on Mother’s Day.

Happy Birthday, my precious one. I am lucky to have you and I hold you close in my heart, today, and always.